1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to an operating method, an apparatus and a memory module integrated with wireless communication component, in particular, to provide a low-cost solution of integrating a memory controller and a wireless communication chip into one package applicable to a handheld apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Various types of flash-based mass storage memories prevail widely in the modern electronic appliances. One of the various memory types is the Multimedia Card (MMC) that is configured to be a non-volatile memory card standard unveiled in 1997 by Siemens AG and SanDisk. Until now, MMC standard is often used in most devices which support SD (secure digital) cards.
The MMC-standard memory has been widely used as a storage medium for a portable device. Moreover, many portable devices may adopt this MMC-standard memory inside the devices for more efficient use, which implements an embedded MMC (eMMC) standard of memory. eMMC describes architecture of an embedded storage solution with MMC interface, non-volatile memory and controller, which are fabricated into a small ball grid array (BGA) package.
With the adoption of the built-in mass storage memory such as the described eMMC memory, the modern cellular phones are also equipped with the wireless module for processing wireless communication, such as GPRS, 3G, and even a near-field communication (NFC) technology. The manufacturer of the related products therefore develops a module with a package of both the eMMC component and the NFC component. Reference is made to FIG. 1.
FIG. 1 schematically depicts a block diagram of a module packaging two components in accordance to the conventional technology. The shown portable communication device 10 includes cellular phone system module 101, NFC (near-field communication) component 105, and antenna 107, and an eMMC component 106. The NFC (near-field communication) component 105 is connected to the cellular phone system module 101 via a bus 102, such as UART or SPI. The eMMC component 106 uses it proprietary eMMC bus 103 to connect the cellular phone system module 101.
The described eMMC component 106 includes a controller (not shown) for primarily managing the non-volatile memory access processes between the cellular phone system module 101 and the non-volatile memory unit 108. That means the eMMC controller manages the MMC communication protocol, including memory read/write tasks, memory block management, and block allocation.
On the other hand, the mentioned NFC unit is provided for the cellular phone system module 101 with this device 10 to process the NFC wireless signals. Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for cellular phones or similar devices, and used to establish radio communication with other devices as touching them together or bringing them into close proximity. The cellular phone system module 101 may interact with the other device with NFC functionality using NFC signals. For example, the cellular phone system module 101 may initiate an NFC handshaking process when the cellular phone system module 101 detects the other device within a short distance specified by the NFC protocol. The two devices may interactively process the data exchange when the communication channel is established after the handshaking process.
In the aspect of the reference described in FIG. 1, the cellular phone system module 101 actually processes the data by the eMMC component 106 and the signals through the NFC unit separately via the bus 102 and the eMMC bus 103. The data transmitted through the NFC component 107 and through the bus 102 should be sent to the cellular phone system module 101, and then stored to the eMMC component 106 via the eMMC bus 103.
In the conventional technology, the memory of the eMMC component 106 is a kind of non-volatile memory used to store data from the cellular phone system module 101. When the data received through the NFC unit shown in the figure, the data may be temporarily stored in the volatile memory of the cellular phone system module 101, for example the RAM in the cellular phone. After that, the data may be permanently written into the non-volatile memory as the cellular phone system module 101 sends the data to the eMMC component 106.